◆ On this day

June 8

5 sourced moments from June 8 in history: The Prophet Muhammad Died in Medina (632); Iceland's Laki fissure cracked open and poisoned a hemisphere (1783); America's first vacuum cleaner needed a hand crank (1869), plus 2 more.

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5 things happened on June 8

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1949 Culture & Arts · Literature

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was published on 8 June 1949

Orwell's dystopia of Big Brother and the Thought Police arrived just months before its gravely ill author's death.

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1924 History · Modern

Nobody knows if Mallory and Irvine reached Everest's top

George Mallory and Sandy Irvine vanished near Everest's summit on 8 June 1924. A century of clues has not settled whether they got to the top.

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1869 Technology · Inventions

America's first vacuum cleaner needed a hand crank

On June 8, 1869, a Chicago inventor patented a hand-powered "sweeping machine"—the awkward ancestor of every vacuum since.

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1783 Earth & Climate · Natural Disasters

Iceland's Laki fissure cracked open and poisoned a hemisphere

On June 8, 1783, a 16-mile fissure split southern Iceland and spent eight months bleeding lava and toxic gas across the Northern Hemisphere.

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632 Religion & Beliefs · Major Religions

The Prophet Muhammad Died in Medina

After a single decade of preaching, the founder of Islam died in 632 having bound much of a fractured Arabia into one faith.

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